Mysterious Guppy Disease-Kills in 24 hours

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wakingupnow

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Mar 26, 2009
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Nassau, Bahamas.
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Jessica
Good day all,

Well, I've been working at a family owned pet shop for about 3 months now, taking care of all of the fish, turtles, newts and frogs.

We don't have a system where all the tanks get the same filtered water. We actually have filters on individual tanks ranging from 20 gallons all the way up to 210 gallons.

However, we get Swordtails, Mollies and both Feeder and Fancy Guppies from someone who has a large pond. All of these fish live in the same exact water, but these Guppies seem to have some unexplained and mysterious illness that I can't seem to figure out what it is. Here are the symptoms.

Males tend to have tail-rot and use their tail very little. Almost as if they shimmy like Mollies. Some females might get a little fin-rot, but usually when they die they look absolutely healthy. Some of the fish will stay close to the top of the water and some lay on the bottom, but are still a bit active for feeding.

I mean the fish will have a beautiful tail in the morning and by late afternoon the tail is half rotted off. It's not nipping because it looks as though the rotted part is rolled up and mucus like.

From the time of noticing any illness what so ever to death is always 24 hours or less. Also, what ever illness this is seems to lay dormant for weeks and pops back up again.

Since I have no clue what this is, I decided to use Jungle Lifeguard on a new group of Male Fancies in a 20 gal by themselves. Since then, only 1 has died, but I'm still crossing my fingers.

Any ideas on what this may be? I'm totally stumped since the Mollies and Platies usually have no problems what so ever and they all come from the same exact water.

The two tank sizes are a 50 gallon for both male and female Fancies, a 30 gallon for feeder guppies and a 20 gallon for Male fancies.

All water parameters are normal; Ammonia and Nitrite are zero and Nitrates are kept under 20ppm. pH Levels are around 7.8 since we use Well water.

I also forgot to add that the Feeder Guppies (all females) in their own tank hardly have this problem at the time, but I purchased 4 of them and 1 has already died.
 
Last edited:

mel_20_20

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Sep 1, 2008
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Deep in the heart of texas
That is very puzzling for sure. It's strange that just the guppies are having problems.
I would suspect some kind of bacterial infection but it would be odd that only the guppies are showing signs of infection.

Do you know if the person with the pond restocks or adds to his breeding stock from other breeders? He may have genetically weak stock, making them prone to infection.
 

wakingupnow

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Mar 26, 2009
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Nassau, Bahamas.
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Jessica
From what I know, the guy does not get other fish from other people because he has so many already.

So, that might just be a reason why they are getting ill. As you said, the smaller the pool for breeding, the more issues probably will arise.
 

BubbleE1

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Feb 8, 2010
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my male guppy sort of acts like that. minus the tail rot. another male guppy is picking on him and nipping his tail. i'm not sure what to do..
 
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